The Eighth King (The White Umbrella Testament Book 1)

by Matt Weber

  “The fragrance of jasmine and rosemary?”

  “The very one! Did you scent it?” Lin Gyat looked at Datang with renewed interest.

  “The White and Red, Envied of Snakes, I would cut your jugular this moment if I could reach it without wasting the Crane’s Migration Step. I would substitute the femoral in a heartbeat, but given its proximity to your generative organs, I fear it is not blood that would emerge.”

  “Ah! You have heard, then, of the terrible death of the Unwilling Monk? His arteries were stopped up with great clots of—”

  “Enough!”

  Lin Gyat gave Datang a hurt look, then shrugged, crossed his arms, and stared into space.

  They spent a minute in silence, Datang holding down anger the while, Lin Gyat apparently serene. A pair of Versicolor Guards walked through the square and shot the two dark looks but, seeing the immensity of Lin Gyat, continued their patrol without giving offense. A man with a dancing chicken attempted to set up a mat and bowl, but a turbaned Riverman nearly as big as Lin Gyat walked over and said a few quiet words, and the chicken-trainer took his show elsewhere. “Pure barbarism,” said Lin Gyat.

  “For once we agree,” said Datang. “Farm animals were not meant to dance.”

  “A few centuries ago, you would have said men were not meant to kill at range, but here you stand with the deadliest sniper in the world. The barbarism is in refusing the chicken its opportunity. In Degyen, we would not have shooed away that chicken if the governor’s own retinue had been passing by. Why, the bird might have found a patron!”

  “And if its dancing had not,” Datang said darkly, “its flesh would.”

  “I am not so sure,” Lin Gyat said thoughtfully. “Its shanks looked stringy. But it hardly seems right to protect an animal from its natural fate.”

  “That is what I said.”

  “Is it?” said Lin Gyat. “Perhaps you mumbled. I have noticed that you often speak indistinctly.”

  “That is for your protection,” said Datang.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “In any case,” said Lin Gyat, “did you notice how all sound ceased in the tent when first I spoke of sport?”

  Instinctively, Datang pricked her ears, and the tent certainly seemed suspiciously silent. But then, the air of the fabric market was full of words and the susurrus of cloth, and the heavy purple velvet of the tent must surely mute much of what modest sound originated within. “Has it stopped now?” Datang whispered.

  “No.” Lin Gyat also lowered his voice. “Either they did not hear me, or their ardor is so great, they did not care.”

  Datang looked at Lin Gyat, then back at the tent, then back at Lin Gyat. “I think you are mocking me, Envied of Snakes. I do not credit these claims of preternatural senses with which you ply me. I do not believe anything untoward is taking place inside that tent.”

  “Come now,” said Lin Gyat. “A veritable symphony of lust there crescendoes. Can you truly not hear the music?”

  “Your unhealthy speculations bore me,” said Datang.

  “They do not,” said Lin Gyat, with some accuracy, “but I will cease to share them with you if you like.”

  “Do so.”

  “Do cease, or do share?”

  “The Lotus, man, cease!”

  The next silence lasted perhaps ten minutes, until Lin Yongten emerged from an alley between a tent selling mandarins’ robes and one selling hats of all varieties. He looked at Datang and Lin Gyat with some surprise, then walked over to join them. “Good evening. I had thought to find you at home, since money is so low. What are you doing at this tent?”

  “We are escorting the senior Queen to purchase a bolt of rare phoenix silk,” Datang said quickly, before Lin Gyat could mention a word, “smuggled from the heart of the Garden. Lin Gyat harbors certain vile speculations on the dickering, which I do not wish repeated in my presence, but you may ask him later if you like. What brings you here? Have you earned your scholar’s quail?” She gestured toward the tent that sold mandarins’ robes—though its wares, it must be said, were gaudy in the main, certainly with nary a trace of green on green.

  “You honor me,” said Lin Yongten, “but I am only meeting Netten. He has recently been patrolling the Boulevard of Sudden Enlightenment, and he had an errand here. The Queen is in the market for phoenix silk?” Lin Yongten shrugged. “Well, she is an expert seamstress, with more time to devote to the craft of late. But it seems a curious choice. The Gardener diplomatic corps is due at the Orchid Palace in a month.”

  “I am sure there are enough chests and closets to hide a few yards of silk,” said Datang. “Look! There is Netten.”

  Sure enough, Netten’s black-clad form had just glided between the tents selling scholars’ silks. He was shod in unsoled slippers and unarmed, and his usual equanimity seemed deeper and more expansive than usual. “Good evening, my friends,” he said. “What do Envied of Snakes and the estimable Ape’s Left Hand do flanking this tent in the fabric market? Has Queen Pema succumbed once more to her lust for finery?”

  Datang’s fist was in Lin Gyat’s kidney before Netten had finished the sentence, knocking the words from the huge man’s mouth. “She is in negotiations for a bolt of silk,” she said. “No doubt she will be done soon, or else the merchant will grow wary of the mounting conversation outside his place of business. He is said to revile soldiers.”

  “Then Eager Edge and I must take our leave,” said Netten. “A mutual friend, newly returned to civilization, awaits us at the Jugged Dragon on the Boulevard. Join us if you wish—I have come into a small sum, so the round will be on me.”

  The four all made the Abasement of Close Friends Parting for Short Intervals, and Netten and Lin Yongten went in search of drink. Datang spent a moment in thought. “Did you notice something odd about him?”

  “Netten? I have always found his hair a touch off-putting,” said Lin Gyat, “and one ought to wear proper shoes on cobblestones, no matter the condition of one’s feet.”

  “I meant peculiar to this evening.”

  “He does not often buy drinks.” Lin Gyat contemplated a moment. “Then, I suppose, neither do I. But if I had come into a sum, I would.”

  “Do not let it worry you,” said Datang. “He was in good spirits, and yet I felt something was missing.”

  “His weapons?”

  “I have never seen him carry weapons.”

  “Who never carries weapons?” said Mother-of-Daughters, emerging from the tentflap as composed as ever. There was a small bolt of fabric in her arms, but it was certainly no Gardener phoenix silk—a white silk, rather, with a subtle angular pattern in slightly less glossy thread. Lin Gyat held out his hand for it instinctively, and she deposited it there. “He does occasionally procure rare finds,” said Mother-of-Daughters, noticing their scrutiny of the bolt, “but his phoenix silk was not one. A credible imitation, of Shrastakan make, but not authentic. This will serve instead.”

  They started back toward the Boulevard of Sudden Enlightenment, and thence to the Resting Place Between Heaven and Earth Pavilion. When Mother-of-Daughters was pulled aside for a lengthy conversation with a nervous junior mandarin, Lin Gyat leaned down to Datang and whispered, “The musk is still on her! Perhaps there will be a lucky man in the Orchid Palace tonight.”

  “It is a perfume, you fat goat,” hissed Datang. “Only gods and hundred-year-old sages naturally exude the scent of flowers, and not to signal their interest in ‘sport.”‘

  “Perfume?” said Lin Gyat. “What is that?”

  Datang, thankfully, was not obliged to explain, for Mother-of-Daughters had ended her conversation. They escorted her to the Orchid Palace at last in blessed silence.

  A one-sided parlay

  he minutiae of siege-hunkering consumed the King’s day. The army’s orders were simple enough, of course, but with troops withdrawn from the Great South Plain, the outlying farms became a concern; refuge had to be offered to those who wished it,
and though those who did not were welcome to stay at their homesteads, the stores they had accumulated could not stay with them. But no one had told the farmers to prepare to empty their silos, no price had been set by the crown to make them whole, and none of the troops in charge of the evacuation knew exactly when to abandon bribes and take up threats. There were no killings, miracle enough, although a few older men were beaten harder than perhaps they should have been; and a good portion of the autumn crop was salvaged—although that salvage only made the problems of storage and distribution more immediate. The influx of provisions and evacuees could not help but be a public spectacle, and citizens of Rassha who had given little thought to the unrest coming out of Therku gave simultaneous and sudden thought to hoarding food. A few financiers made tidy profits on turnip futures.

  King Tenshing made a twilight speech from atop the gates of the Orchid Palace, hoping that the Diamond Word might blunt the citizenry’s fears. The speech was remarkable for two reasons: First, the favorable angle of the sun, which filled the sky behind the King with fire and gave all present (save, perhaps, the King himself) a feeling of participating in something of grand scope and far-reaching consequence; and, second, because the King did not retire inside the Orchid Palace after the speech, but instead leapt gracefully from the curtain wall into the cobbled square and, eyes kindly but hands afire, parted the throng to make his way toward the South Gates of Rassha.

  Not far behind the King were General Gyaltsen, girt in the blue Sky Armor and carrying the Cerulean Sword (which contented itself with quiet muttering, being muffled by its scabbard and a touch crowd-shy in any case) strapped across his back, and the King’s Lama in his red and gold ceremonial robes. These men were flanked by a small retinue of Demon Guards, armed this day not with the bayoneted carbines that they used to defend King Tenshing in close quarters, but rather with slim man-high rifles in their hands and broad-bladed knives at their belts. The King met no eyes on the walk from the Orchid Gates to the Wind Horse Gate, but he did mind the change in the crowds and their surroundings: The well-to-do burghers and nobility who lived near the Orchid Palace gave way to clerks and cooks, students and teachers, until at the South Gate night market the crowd was dominated by small-time craftsmen, mendicant monks, idle young men with beedies in their mouths and bleak futures written clearly in their eyes, and refugee farmers from the Great South Plain. The King vaulted atop the walls of Rassha and turned to face his subjects; but he kept his silence until his general and lama could mount the wall in more conventional fashion. Questions and even the occasional insult (the latter always deeply buried in the crowd) flew up to him, although, as we have said, he did not respond. Yet somehow King Tenshing Astama projected the impression of listening to every word that touched his ear as though it were a finely tempered argument, delivered courteously and comprehensively by a first-rate diplomat or lawyer, and integrating that new knowledge deeply into his well-made mind. His people, in turn, sensed this solicitude, and it was evident that when they spoke, their words arose from deep and sincere feeling, not merely out of a desire to perform for their assembled peers. (It must be admitted that such generalities, although manifestly true to an observer, do not easily survive anecdote; for how can one hear about these shouts of “Coward!” and “Pretender!” and “Set my cat free!”, this last from an addled cordwainer who had published many lengthy monographs on the unjust imprisonment of his cat some thirty-seven years before, under the reign of Tenshing Saptama, and truly credit the purity of their motives, much less the sincerity of the King’s attention? And yet credited they must be. We have it on good authority that the Thousand Arm Deity, whose description of Tenshing’s two twilight speeches is justly designated the pinnacle of his poetic achievement, has authored a most excellent short verse play based on the very cordwainer just described, which he has called “The Leatherman’s Lion,” although we do not know whether he has allowed the script to leave the heavens. This is of no special consequence in its own right, of course, but it perhaps suggests the diverse and often contradictory impressions available even to celestial beings whose faculties of discernment and understanding are, if not strictly perfect, then certainly unsurpassed.)

  But in due time, the King’s General and the King’s Lama mounted the wall of Rassha above the Wind Horse Gate, and King Tenshing at last delivered a word of explanation.

  “My subjects, many of you are concerned about what you see as a swift reversal in the fortunes of war. The day’s evacuation of the Great South Plain and our withdrawal of troops inside the city walls, leaving the insurgent army uncontested in the field not miles from your homes, have eroded your confidence. I have not been solicitous of this, and you deserve better. I will turn my back toward you in a moment. Rest assured that it is a shift in aspect and not in attitude—that every one of you is before me, watching and judging as is your right and privilege, as I address myself to the army that now darkens our door. And know this as well: We do not gird for siege. There will be peace, or there will be war on the South Plains, but there will be no hunger in these homes, no blood in these gutters. Know it as you know the ways of your trade and the voices of your family.”

  And King Tenshing Astama turned his back and leapt lightly up atop one of the crenellations, where he beheld a darkening plain, pierced with fires from the Wind Horse Gate and back as far as the eye could see.

  “My subjects!” Tenshing called, and a great susurrus blanketed the Great South Plain as uncounted thousands of men stopped what they were doing and looked up. “Wherefore have you marched to my house this night?”

  “That’s clever,” whispered Gyaltsen to the King’s Lama. “He asks them a question, but no one’s ready to answer. It makes the whole campaign look foolish.” The general looked up at Tenshing. “Of course, if someone’s got a good answer, then things don’t look so foolish any more.”

  An arrow flew at Tenshing. It would have gone wide, but he snatched it from the air. He examined it, as though reading a complicated document. “I do not think you expected to kill me on the walls of Rassha,” he said. “I do not think you expected to see me at all.”

  There were shouts from the army, no more coherent than the shouts from Tenshing’s own crowd had been. The King took one last look at the arrow, then let it fall to land point-first in the ground at the base of the city walls. “We are not such a very large kingdom,” said Tenshing. “There are greater realms to the south and east who would happily take us as a province. Against those powers, I would be glad of all the steady soldiers your general has mustered here. But it is all right.” He let that last word echo, just a bit. “Concerns compete. And to compete with the known threats of the Garden and the River, your Rough-Hewn Torch’s claim must be strong indeed.” Predictable rejoinders followed this: “As steel!”, “Liar!”, “Pretender!”, and a few arrows, all falling short. But the whispers lasted long after the shouts were done. Tenshing let those whispers scuttle where they would for a few moments, scraping against each other with dry hisses like a snake’s coils. “Well. I do not wish to interrupt your preparations. You will do what you feel you must. But let me say this much: We have many men and women spending their first night in Rassha today. Farmers and homesteaders of the Great South Plain. And we are not caring for them as well as we should. Our hands are full. If some yet newer face were to appear within our walls, we could hardly notice.”

  There it was, at last: The parting of the crowd, the faint rhythm of hooves on the plain’s packed dirt. It was another minute before Tenshing could see the rider properly. “Hail, honored subject,” he called. “What is the substance of your petition?” At this juncture Tenshing remembered his last petitioner, still waiting patiently in the halls of the Orchid Palace for her audience.

  “There is no petition,” called the rider. “I merely come forth to inform you that Chief-Marshal Kandro will not parlay in this fashion.”

  “That is just,” said Tenshing. “I, too, would demur to enter a conversation wit
h an adversary who so flagrantly claimed the high ground.” He waited for the echoes of his voice to die away. “Then, though, no adversary can claim the high ground on a master of the Crane’s Migration Step.”

  Gyaltsen chuckled darkly; murmurs and whispers rippled again, like a pond in the rain. The rider’s face grew ugly. “The man who warms the Orchid Throne was not, himself, born a master of the Crane’s Migration Step, but learned it through hard training like any other master. The question of the claim is a question of potential.”

  “At last, a topic of substance,” called Tenshing. “Talking of potential—has the Chief-Marshal spoken to the messenger he sent to me last night? I sent a message back.”

  “He sent no messenger last night,” the rider said. “I fear you are mistaken.”

  “You are a loyal man, lieutenant,” said Tenshing, “and the stoniness in your voice tells me the message has reached its destination, which is all I care to know. After some thought, however, I did arrive at a decision. I think our discussion is worth having face to face. Please join me.”

  The lieutenant leapt off his horse and ran for the wall. When he reached the base, he found hand- and toeholds and began to climb.

  “That is one proof, my subjects. I do not have the time for eight. But I can spare a few.” And he found the tent whence the rider had come—a modest tent, though near the center of the camp, the same brown hides as the rest, but with a slightly wider cylindrical structure and a smoke-hole in the roof so fires could be lit.